School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chelmer Valley High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Chelmer Valley High School as their first choice did not get a place: 196 put it first and 169 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Essex actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

27

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

196 first preferences for 231 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chelmer Valley High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chelmer Valley High School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Essex as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Essex, 15.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 249 of 1,651 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Essex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Essex ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Chelmer Valley High School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 2 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Chelmer Valley High School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.06 per place 199 first choices 188 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 189 first choices 181 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 191 first choices 221 places 2018/19 1.06 per place 204 first choices 193 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 181 first choices 196 places 2020/21 0.87 per place 170 first choices 196 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 196 first choices 195 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 198 first choices 196 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 202 first choices 195 places 2024/25 0.83 per place 183 first choices 221 places 2025/26 0.85 per place 197 first choices 231 places 2026/27 0.85 per place 196 first choices 231 places
First preferences per place at Chelmer Valley High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 196 first preferences for 231 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chelmer Valley High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 188 199 159 1.06
2016/17 181 189 140 1.04
2017/18 221 191 176 0.86
2018/19 193 204 164 1.06
2019/20 196 181 167 0.92
2020/21 196 170 155 0.87
2021/22 195 196 167 1.01
2022/23 196 198 167 1.01
2023/24 195 202 172 1.04
2024/25 221 183 163 0.83
2025/26 231 197 181 0.85
2026/27 231 196 169 0.85

Places offered

231

in 2026/27

Named first choice

196

798 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.2%

169 of 196

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 231 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Chelmer Valley High School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Chelmer Valley High School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 In accordance with the School Admissions Code 2021 priority will be given to looked after children and all previously looked after children, including those who appear to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. Previously looked after children are children who were looked after but ceased to be so because they were adopted or became subject to a child arrangement order or special guardianship order. […] criterion continues in the source document
2 Where the child has a sibling who attends the school in any year group excluding the final year. A sibling is defined as a child living in the same family unit. This includes biological as well as step brothers and sisters and children of partners living at the same address. Children residing in the same household as part of an extended family, such as cousins, will not be treated as siblings. In the case of twins or triplets etc. both or all will be offered places. […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Pupils who live with parents, guardian or carers, who are employees of Chelmer Valley High School, provided that the employee has been employed by the School for a minimum of one year at the date of application for admissions.
4 Where a child attends one of the following primary schools that have a relationship with Chelmer Valley High School as part of the River Chelmer Partnership. ➢ Boreham Primary School ➢ Broomfield Primary School ➢ Great Leighs County Primary School ➢ Great Waltham C of E Primary School ➢ Little Waltham C of E Primary School ➢ Newlands Spring Primary School ➢ St Pius X Catholic Primary School By the closing date for applications.
5 Applicants living within the priority admissions area.
6 Remaining Applicants In the event of oversubscription within any of the above criteria, priority will be determined by straight line distance from home to school, those living closest being given higher priority. For an explanation of how distance is measured, please see the Secondary Education in Essex booklet. In the unlikely event of applicants with an identical distance competing for a single space at the school, the place will be offered to one applicant on the basis of lots drawn by a member of school staff not involved in admissions, with the exception of twins, triplets etc. A waiting list is kept for all year groups. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Chelmer Valley High School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

1,160

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,005

86.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

155

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

170

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Chelmer Valley High School has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Chelmer Valley High School reported 155 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.6% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Chelmer Valley High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,168 places 1,187 on roll 2012/13 1,168 places 1,181 on roll 2013/14 1,168 places 1,164 on roll 2014/15 1,168 places 1,166 on roll 2015/16 1,168 places 1,175 on roll 2016/17 1,168 places 1,192 on roll 2017/18 1,198 places 1,220 on roll 2018/19 1,168 places 1,191 on roll 2020/21 1,168 places 1,159 on roll 2021/22 1,168 places 1,165 on roll 2022/23 1,168 places 1,136 on roll 2023/24 1,168 places 1,143 on roll 2024/25 1,330 places 1,152 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Essex

Postcode CM1 7ER. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137260).

Other contested secondary schools in Essex

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.